Mobile data networks continue to experience an unprecedented expansion in total traffic, as new types of client devices (e.g., web-enabled smart phones, tablet devices, Internet-enabled TVs, gaming consoles, etc.) begin to consume larger amounts of bandwidth. Generally, a coder-decoder (“codec”) device or program may be used to transmit certain types of data over a network, such as, for example a voice-over-IP (VoIP) network or the like. In operation, a first instance of an audio codec may encode an audio data stream or signal on the transmitter side of a communication, and a second instance of the audio codec may decode the audio stream on the receiver side of that communication.
Modern mobile networks typically employ variable bit rate (VBR) codecs. The main advantage of VBR codecs is that available bits may be used with flexibility, so that encoding of audio can be dynamically adjusted to fit network bandwidth conditions and/or the complexity of the underlying audio signal. In contrast with constant bitrate (CBR) codecs, VBR codecs can vary the amount of output data (i.e., the number of bits) as a function of time. For example, VBR codecs allow more data to be allocated to more complex segments of an audio signal, while less data is allocated to less complex segments. Additionally or alternatively, bitrates may be adjusted depending upon network traffic or available bandwidth.